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In this project we take an existing multilevel car park in Little Collins Street and alter its purpose. The car park becomes a home for electric cars and their batteries are linked together to store and discharge the energy for the city.

Application of this Vehicle to Grid (V2G) technology in Melbourne is important. As a way of accelerating the uptake of this technology the approach is to create a connection with the people of Melbourne through a multipurpose use of existing carparks. The dual uses being both technology & culture.

When the city’s workers disperse home, the car park is emptied. Performers and the people of Melbourne are invited into this void. The battery powered cars and bikes of the audience then focus their energy on powering the performance. The car park is activated; the surrounding area is transformed. The building connects the cities people, and is enlivened by it.

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Our cities are home to solid, functional, beautiful structures from all ages of history. How can they be part of a future in which buildings touch the earth more lightly, and deliver more for people whilst consuming less?

What better way than to wrap them up in a quilt of insulation?

Fabric first upgrades drastically reduce the energy footprint of existing buildings. We propose full Passive House retrofits, which replace inefficient glazing, seal gaps and add appropriate insulation to protect the indoor environments from external extremes. We propose building resilience into our cities without having to start from scratch. We have all the knowledge and technology to do this right now.

This is win-win: improve comfort; improve health; slash emissions. We can – and should – normalise a culture of valuing our existing structures for what they are, and unearthing their hidden potential to be part of our thriving, low impact future.

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In Melbourne, there is a culture of converting unused rooftops to thriving venues. The vertical laneway of Curtin House famously culminates in a rooftop cinema. In other places, restaurants and bars pop up to occupy the city’s fifth elevation.

With this in mind, a new solar architecture takes the form of a rooftop module that is made of simple components assembled into a tentlike form. It is both the infrastructure to carry photovoltaics and a new place for Melbournians to experience. These habitable solar arrays recognise an existing pattern of use. There is a layer added to the city - of bars, cafes, clubs, dining and performance – that builds upon what is already here. The new spaces prompt ideas for other uses too - learning spaces, co-working offices, artist studios, gardens and galleries.

These activities are wrapped in photovoltaics that generate all the electricity they need and more, contributing back to the grid. The roofs that enclose them are steeply pitched to maximise the catchment area and to capture the sun. There is a rawness to the supporting structure, with the appearance of temporary scaffolding and the photovoltaic panels are simply bolted together. The open-ended interior space frames views and feels protected, warm and inviting.

The tent forms are infinitely flexible to suit different rooftop conditions and uses. In plan they can be arranged in a circle, as a starfish, in X and Y-shapes, as a larger field and, of course, in a single line. The modules also support climbing vines and plants to frame garden pockets.

Melbourne’s rooftop culture is amplified, expanded and electrified.

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A Latrobe Valley where solar agriculture underpins a 21st century economy — and one that provides 50% of Greater Melbourne’s power.

What is solar agriculture? It’s simple — the mixed use of agricultural land for both food production and energy production (through solar farms). It’s not theoretical. It’s tried and tested. And it delivers.

For the Valley it offers jobs and a safer, cleaner environment — while maintaining the region’s proud identity as an energy producer.

For the City of Melbourne it is not just a clean energy supply, but a vast new food bowl to feed our growing metropolis. But how do we make sure we bring the local community — and Melburnians — along for the ride?

By quite literally giving them a taste of solar agriculture in the Latrobe Valley. What you’re looking at is a prefabricated and repeatable greenhouse structure and restaurant. People visit, walk the property — and enjoy a day featuring food grown right there on the property. In a building powered by the solar they see all around them.

It’s an immersive, delicious, experience of our energy future.

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It is a challenge in any location to encourage the general public to embrace treated water in their daily lives. Knowing this, it is important to prepare the public and normalise the treatment of wastewater to a drinkable standard in Melbourne due to the logic and financial viability in comparison to the much higher cost desalination process. The outcome will leave future generations with a more cost effective, more secure and high quality water supply. To achieve this we must engage the people of Melbourne with treated water in new ways. This is another example of connecting technology with culture. And in Melbourne what better location to do that than the iconic MCG.

An early adopter of Water Unlimited, The Water Tank Club (or the MCC – Melbourne Cistern Club) has been established as a pilot project under the bleachers at the MCG. Untreated water from the roof and plaza of the precinct is filtered through a series of pipes and tanks that form the walls of the void space under the concrete seating bleachers of the G. Clean, treated water is stored in tanks that are lit from beneath and used for drinking, swimming and misting - making the air wet and a dripping ceiling – a moist cathedral to celebrate performance, left over space and hydraulic engineering. In a spatial version of ‘beer-goggles’ punters see each other across the room, their normal faces made wonderful and warped through the lens of the clean water tanks. Night’s end is signalled by sun rise, reflected into the space from the Collins Place Towers.

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This is a typical suburban cul-de-sac – that has changed its local transport system.

The property owners negotiated to close their no-through road to everyday traffic and install a shared carport at the entrance of the street – a max. 200m from the other-end of the street. This simple act – and small personal behavioural change – frees up enormous real estate for other uses – real estate that can be put-to-use for cultural and environmental production.

Energy, waste and water can be renegotiated at street scale. Reduced traffic allows for more permeable road and driveway surfacing rather than concrete and asphalt – dramatically reducing the burden on the stormwater system – and allowing local water retention. Verges re-wilded with native species further treat the water for reuse.

The things we normally do in garages, including workshops, storage, gardening equipment, water storage and rubbish collection are all able to be rethought collectively. Without the fixed dimensions of the car and its turning circles being the key determining factor in the spatial layout – buildings can be more flexible to respond to our human and environmental needs. More density with better design can be incorporated much more easily if parking is separated from dwellings. Homes suited for an aging population and people with mobility needs can be accommodated with drop-off zones and small electric transfer vehicles.

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As a case study, Fitzroy swimming pool would be the first of 150 anaerobic digestors to be rolled out across Melbourne to deal with the city’s expanding food waste problem.

This tower combines two unlikely companions, waste and recreation. Collecting 10 tonnes of food waste a day from the surrounding food and beverage businesses; the tower converts this waste into biogas, used to heat the swimming pool’s sauna, spa and indoor pool. Housed within the tower are two large tanks, stacked to minimise its footprint, while also celebrating this new industrial form on the suburban streetscape.

The tower also produces a nutrient-rich fertiliser to feed an expanding landscape of plants growing in and around the pool and in the adjacent park. Nearby residents are encouraged to drop off their food waste before heading inside to jump into the pool or sauna.

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Queen Victoria Market is one of the Melbourne’s most loved precincts. Opened in 1878 it has provided a continuous destination for generations of Melbournians and visitors for over 140 years.

The market sheds and halls have changed and developed over the decades and the market is currently undergoing a further series of redevelopments to underground the cars and reclaim the existing asphalt carpark as public space and parkland.

As a product of selling fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and fish, the market produces hundreds of tons of organic waste every month.

This proposal looks to take the significant organic waste generated at Victoria Markets and turn it into energy, for use by both the market stall holders and visitors to the precinct. Gas is generated through the use of an anaerobic digester. The methane produced will provide energy, through a gas engine, to power a moonlight cinema for Melbourne City Council’s proposed new park atop the existing market carpark. The methane will also be used by the market’s fleet of forklifts and piped through the market to provide gas for the food outlets. Food trucks can jack in to service points adjacent to the digester to service the moonlight cinema or other market events, and Public BBQ’s will be provided in the park for general use.

Food waste and surplus vegetables, usually destined for landfill, will instead be transparently utilised to help power a treasured Melbourne precinct, while the bi-product, a nutrient rich fertiliser, will be offered to market shoppers to take home to their gardens and used on nearby city parks.

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We need to end the sale of any product that is destined for landfill. A physical space is required for communication, awareness and education for consumers to make better choices. The popularity of such a space will send a message of support to political leaders to introduce much needed regulation. But let’s not preach to the converted here, it’s an important message for all of Melbourne. This creates an opportunity once again to connect technology or solutions with culture by connecting waste with art.

It’s 2030 and Melbourne is a trash free city. Welcome to Replace Me, a retrospective art gallery making the invisible visible and celebrating the beauty and value of the discarded.

The gallery’s permanent collection will comprise a series of “cores” – tubes of solid landfill waste drilled and extracted from extinct landfill sites across Melbourne. Like layers of ice drilled in Antarctica they depict our changing relationship to waste over time. Once drilled, local and international Artists work with the cores - curating, cleaning, assembling and constructing, creating contemporary works of art.

Visitors would use an augmented reality app as they explore, being guided to discover hidden bottles from the 19th century, durable 1950s appliances, and select moments in the masses of recent fashion, electronic and plastic waste.

Replace Me unpacks the material and cultural value of our discarded items. It serves as a signpost pointing to the moment we were empowered as a community to take a different direction.

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The Circular Economy. A social enterprise that teaches repair and reuse. The facility repairs and sells refurbished products, and hosts workshops where individuals can come along and learn how to repair their own things. This allows people to rethink how they use and dispose of resources. At the same time, workshops with businesses and manufacturers are hosted encouraging the transition into circular products in all industries.

We all know that person who has a natural ability to fix things, to take the seemingly useless and transform it into a re-vamped, well oiled thing of beauty. Or maybe they just help you fix your bike chain. Regardless, this is their church. A Cathedral of repair, where tech and machinery of all types are archived, pulled apart, sorted for parts. Where people can bring anything from a toaster to a state of the art road bike for repairs. Inside, alongside the archive of parts, is a community tool library.

The building, acknowledging its use, re-purposes the existing structure and superimposes a new mass timber structural system, which itself can be unbolted and the materials easily repurposed for future alternate use.

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Melbourne is a Design City and now we can use design to solve our most pressing issues. Best of all, we don’t need to invent the solutions – we just need to deploy them!

We know how to take buildings off grid and have a net positive effect on our city - we only need to look to the past. On site infrastructure is efficient and operationally cost-effective - its how we did it in the past.

Solar panels as cladding operate buildings on the power of the sun. Placement of the panels give shadow, texture and depth like verandas.

Visible infrastructure animates space in much the same way as distillery equipment, exciting in scale and materiality, the forms and shapes are intriguing and dramatic and real.

Cross laminated timber construction is relatively new, but timber feels so familiar to us. This eternally renewable resource is well suited to cellular construction and so enjoyable to be near.

Less glass, more wall, articulation, texture – people want these in buildings –glazed sheaths have alienated us and are a thing of the past.

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We have all the tried, tested and proven technologies today, to build the office building of the future.

That is a carbon neutral building in construction and operation.

The first step towards achieving this is by building with Mass timber. Products such as Cross Laminated Timber and Glulam - which are already being manufactured in in Australia - are a more sustainable alternative to concrete and steel, due to their renewability, reduced carbon impacts, and carbon sequestration. Combined with a highly efficient envelope, reduced glazing and solar shading the buildings embodied and operational energy can be reduced drastically.

The second step relates to renewables energy supply. Photovoltaics are a technology that Australians are well acquainted with. The office building of the future maximises all opportunity to integrate PV in to facade and rooftop, to power the building from the sun.

Further to the building, is the construction site itself that can reduce its environmental impact and carbon footprint. In various countries worldwide, technology has been developed to power machinery and equipment off the grid - moving away from diesel, to electric. This, along with timber prefabrication and its reduction in waste, will lead to a quieter, healthier and quicker construction site.

Finally, to spread awareness and secure the legacy of a more sustainable building practice, TAFE students and tradespersons as the practitioners to the future will be engaged and educated - through on-site education and involvement.